It’s Serena Vs. Venus Williams in a tuneup for the US Open

This is comeback time for everyone in tennis, and Serena Williams wrote the theme to the extreme on Tuesday.

In her first game in six months, and the first since the coronavirus pandemic began, Williams lost the first set to unseeded Bernarda Pera at the Top Seed Open in Lexington, Ky., And found herself, 0-40, on her serve at 4-4 in the second.

But Pera, a left-wing trader who grew up in Croatia and now represents the United States, was never given the chance to serve for the match.

There was not much to lift Williams. The tournament is played without spectators, with the sounds of passing traffic, including the occasion of cement mixer, the rustling and the moans of a crowd replacing.

Instead of crying, Williams had to feed her championship past, and bring the thunder with her first save and forehead when she needed it most.

They saved four break points to keep up, scraped into the corners to win the set by breaking Pera in the next game, and then tapped the accelerator pedal for a 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 first victory to conclude that was every time as tax as it sounds.

She is calm, without a doubt, yet resilient. As Williams thought she had seen and heard it all in tennis at the age of 38, 2020 has given her a new landscape and a new set of challenges.

“It was a really calm atmosphere; it was really cold, ”Williams said of the empty stadium. “I can not say that I did not like it at all. I find it pretty much nothing. I have been through so many things in my career. That this was completely different. I think I won today because I was calm once in my career. ”

That’s a stretch, of course. Williams is often at her most unstable when she is monitoring her emotions and focusing on the task at hand. (See her repeated demolitions in the zone of the now retired Maria Sharapova.)

But Pera, a flat hitter ranked no. 60 with no apparent fear of Williams’ pace, gave her enough reason to feel less than serene. She hit cornerbacks with little warning to end the exchanges at high speed and kept Williams out of balance with her save with left. Williams even took a tumble at one point as she tried to shift direction.

‘I knew I had to get better; I knew I could do better, ‘Williams said. ‘And it was an interesting game. She beat so many winners and so low. I just had to get used to her game. ‘

No active player in women’s tennis is rallying to win after losing the opening set more often than Williams. She has a winning record in such competitions in the last 10 years, but winning these required her to ascend to a higher plane.

Down, 4-4 and 0-40, they saved the first break point with a big first save, saved the second with an enormous front-runner in the line, saved the third with a fully ripped backhand covering the back of the net. baseline clipped and saved a fourth later in the game with another first save that Pera could not handle.

“That 0-40 and how she got it back is a sign of better tennis on the horizon,” said Sven Groeneveld, the veteran coach who has worked with Sharapova and Sloane Stephens and who traveled to Williams on Tuesday see. “Serena needs more matches to get into their stream, but the big save is always for the rescue. If she had lost this match, it might have fired her a little, but let’s see if she can grow into the tournament. ”

Her match in the second round will come on Thursday against her sister Venus Williams, who defeated Victoria Azarenka, 6-3, 6-2. It will be her 31st meeting, with Serena holding an 18-12 margin.

The Top Seed Open, a new event that replaced the Citi Open women’s tournament on the calendar this year, has plenty of room for a low-level tournament. It includes Coco Gauff, now 16, who made her own successful return to the tournament with a solid 7-5, 7-5 victory over Caroline Dolehide. It was Gauff’s first match since losing to eventual champion Sofia Kenin in the fourth round of the Australian Open in January.

Before the pandemic, the focus was on the age restrictions that kept Gauff from playing a bunch of tournaments as a teenager. But after a five-month hiatus, such restrictions are no longer an issue. The challenge is to find enough tournaments for everyone to play.

The players here will travel alongside New York City to play the Western & Southern Open and the Open United, which due to planning changes caused by the coronavirus will be played back-to-back at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens .

Playing in an empty temporary stadium in a private club of Kentucky will not be quite the same as playing in an empty Arthur Ashe Stadium, with a capacity of more than 23,000.

“I think I’ll be a little different in New York because it’s like a massive stadium,” said Serena Williams. ‘That I’ll probably have to see how that is. But this is like a solo court. It’s small. This kind reminds me of the junior days. That there was something nostalgic about it. “

Pera, who at the age of 25 is still trying to establish herself at the highest level, is certainly more accustomed to small crowds and locations for Off Broadway.

But Williams found a way to adapt to the mix of nostalgia and novelty.

After delaying the start of Tuesday’s match to get her ankles back, she said goodbye to her 2-year-old daughter, Olympia, and husband, Alexis Ohanian, and wore a mask for the first time in her career ( she took it off for the warm-up).

After winning the toss, she had to choose not only to serve or receive storage, but also what color hook she would use to hang her towel behind each baseline. The ball boys and girls are no longer allowed to handle play towels.

After winning the last nine points to close the game, Williams ran forward and stopped well short of the net, raising her racket and waiting with her left hand to recognize Pera instead of going closer and tapping rackets, a gesture that has replaced the postmatch handshake.

It’s indeed a new tennis world, and there are absolutely no guarantees that more Grand Slam titles await Williams. She has been pursuing her 24th without success since returning from pregnancy in 2018, and as Pera’s punches and counterpunches made clear in the midst of the silence, more and more players can handle Williams’ power.

But Williams looked fit and eager again on Tuesday as she proved she still knew how to win when she’s not at her best yet.